


The Fall of Radiant Garden

by The_Unlimited



Series: Vanitas' journey through light [2]
Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: OC Vanitas, Post-Kingdom Hearts Birth By Sleep, Pre-Kingdom Hearts I
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-05
Updated: 2019-08-05
Packaged: 2020-07-31 16:40:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,456
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20118244
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Unlimited/pseuds/The_Unlimited
Summary: How Vanitas ended up going from a Keyblade Master, to a broken boy without memories, to an apprentice to a world's ruler, to a vengeful wanderer of Traverse Town with no home





	The Fall of Radiant Garden

After the people of Radiant Garden had done enough tests and scans, they were forced to face the obvious truth: Vanitas somehow didn't have a life force.

They all deposited their theories, possible radiation from a massive blast, which also could have explained the scar along his face, and his memory. Given that they spoke only in science, that was the solution they were going to have to go with.

But Ansem the Wise grew a great deal of concern over Vanitas. Between the worry about what had happened to him that left him like this, and the fact he was sure that Vanitas didn't have anywhere to go, and the ever growing curiosity about what could have done this to him, he didn't know what the best course of action was.

In the end, Ansem the Wise decided to offer Vanitas to stay with them in the castle. Assuring Vanitas that he would be safe inside these castle walls, and forbidding his other apprentices from doing any kind of experiments on him without his consent, Ansem the Wise let Vanitas sleep in an empty apprentice's chambers while he was there.

Once he had been all patched up, Vanitas decided to join the apprentices and start doing experiments with them. After being fitted for a lab coat, Vanitas managed to slide in easily to the scientist life. He managed to get along with the other scientists, Even and Ienzo, even though even creeped him out sometimes, acting like they knew each other. And Ienzo, he managed to get along with pretty easily. The guy was so quiet all the time.

Vanitas managed to get along with the guards Dilan and Aeleus as well. After they had first encountered him in the town square, Vanitas managed to make a good impression on them with how funny he could be. Naturally, the humor he had was an odd mixture of dark and light, sometimes individually, and sometimes at the same time.

However, two people that Vanitas couldn't see himself getting along with at all were the other newcomer, Xehanort, and the other guard, Braig. Something about the two of them seemed... off.

It wasn't just the way that Braig acted like a big macho jerk around Vanitas. No, there was just something about him that told Vanitas that he was trouble. He didn't know what it was, but he just didn't trust this man.

The same could be said for Xehanort, but on a different level. While something told Vanitas not to trust Braig, something told him to freaking run away from Xehanort. Xehanort put him more on edge than anything they ever did in the castle. Just looking at the man made Vanitas think two things: he was missing something important, and this guy was bad news.

Luckily, on top of everything else, Ansem the Wise assured Vanitas that he could go to him if he was ever curious or worried about anything. The thought of Ansem the Wise willing to help him was what always calmed him down when he was nervous about Xehanort or Braig. It was the reason that he had decided to stay in the first place.

* * *

It had been a while since Vanitas and Xehanort had joined to be Ansem the Wise's latest apprentices. On this day, Vanitas walked into Ansem the Wise's study with hopeful trepidation. Ever since Xehanort convinced the other apprentices to steal Ansem's work and pursue it on their own, Vanitas had been wary that he would walk in on the lab being completely blown up.

When Xehanort had made the offer to him, Vanitas had immediately declined, but was smart enough not to say anything to Ansem... yet. After everything that Ansem had done for Vanitas, it didn't feel right just betraying him like that. So, Vanitas stayed loyal to Ansem by not partaking in Xehanort's experiments, and avoided the wrath of Braig and Xehanort by not blabbing on them to Ansem. The only thing was, Vanitas was a hundred percent sure they would get caught, so he plotted out the best way to reveal everything to Ansem the Wise.

Once Vanitas was in the chamber, he looked up to see that the other apprentices had left the secret door to the lab open again.

"Figures," Vanitas mumbled. "So busy stealing from their Master that they can't even bother to close the door."

Vanitas walked along the railing and was about to enter the lab when he froze. Something in his gut told him something bad was going on in the lab. So, peering slightly around the corner with surprising stealth, Vanitas looked into the lab and his jaw dropped.

Braig stood at the computer, Xehanort stood nearby, looking dizzy, and Even and Ienzo lay on the ground near them, fading slightly. Sometimes they were solid, sometimes they were see through. Either way, dark energy rose off of them.

"Hey!" Braig called to Xehanort, getting his attention. "Is this how you wanted it?"

He gestured to the fading bodies of Even and Ienzo, and Xehanort followed his gaze before looking back at him.

"Xehanort!" Braig exclaimed. "You wanna fill me in?"

He started walking towards Xehanort, who held up his hand. Lightning flared in Xehanort's hand, and all of a sudden, he was holding a blade with the designs of a goat, and a sky blue eye on the end. Braig froze at the familiar sight of the Keyblade.

"I am..." Xehanort muttered out.

Vanitas quickly ducked back into the hallway, and grabbed his head in pain. Something was happening, and it wasn't pleasant. He had seen that Keyblade before, just as he had seen and heard Xehanort before. And how did he know it was called a Keyblade.

"Hey!" Vanitas heard Braig continue. "Do you remember now, or... Wait, did you never lose your memory?"

Vanitas heard rushing, then the sound of a light shining. He peered in once again to see Xehanort holding the tip of his Keyblade to Braig's heart. Light shone from the wound.

"That's not my name," Xehanort told Braig. "I'm not 'Xehanort.'"

Braig held out his hand and went "Wha," before he lost his strength and fell to the floor, unconscious. Light then originated from his chest.

"My name," Xehanort continued. "Is Ansem."

Xehanort looked up, but Vanitas was already running for his life at this point.

Having already closed the secret door to the lab, and running out of the study immediately, Vanitas panted as some of his memories returned to him one at a time. Training at the Land of Departure with Ventus, Terra, and Aqua. Fighting fledgling monsters side by side with a Keyblade with them. Fighting a silver haired man that looked exactly like Terra and Xehanort next to Aqua. Using his Keyblade to hold open a dark portal, and his Keyblade exploding...

Vanitas stopped in his tracks.

"That's it," he gasped. "My Keyblade exploded, and, I said it myself, we don't know what that could do. It took away my life force..."

He reached his hand up to touch his scar, then looked down in his other hand.

"Now how do I get it back?" Vanitas asked, forlornly. "Or better yet, how do I get my friends back?"

Vanitas was shaken out of his thoughts when the castle, literally, shook. He looked up, figuring this was gonna be massive, and looked around.

"Without my Keyblade, there's not much I can do," Vanitas admitted. "So how do I..."

His prayers were answered when he found an "In case of Emergency" case holding a fire axe within it.

"This definitely counts as 'emergnecy,'" Vanitas said as he walked over to the case and opened it.

He pulled out the axe, and held it in both his hands.

"Let's go," Vanitas told the axe. "We've got work to do."

Vanitas walked through the castle, staying prepared for anything that could happen. He held up his axe, to help show that he meant business to anyone that came near him.

After a few seconds, he began to get the sense that someone had appeared behind him. Calling upon the training he finally remembered, he waited until the figure got close enough, and turned around raising the axe up...

And scaring the crap out of Ansem the Wise.

"Oh, geez!" Vanitas said as he lowered the axe. "I am so sorry, Master Ansem."

"No, no," Ansem the Wise assured him. "After what the other apprentices did, I'm surprised you didn't swing it."

"Master," Vanitas reached out and put his hand on Ansem the Wise's shoulder. "This is all Xehanort's fault. He stole..."

"My research," Ansem the Wise said. "My apprentices, and my name."

Vanitas looked surprised at this, not expecting him to know.

"They might think they're smart enough to steal my research," Ansem the Wise declared. "But they're still stupid enough to leave on the security cameras."

Vanitas chuckled at that before the castle shook again. The two looked up in worry, before dark creatures with yellow eyes and antenna popped out of the ground in a nearby hallway.

"The heartless!" both men exclaimed.

Vanitas lifted his axe, and swung it as one of the heartless leaped at them. He hit the heartless with the axe, and it disappeared in a cloud of black smoke.

"Vanitas," Ansem the Wise announced.

Vanitas turned toward the world ruler, who was handing him a stack of papers.

"Xehanort's reports," Ansem the Wise explained. "If you read through them, you should be able to figure out some of what's going on. Now go, you must go help the people of the town."

"What?" Vanitas asked, confused, as he still held up the axe towards the heartless. "Why me?"

"Because that visitor we had not too long ago was a friend of yours," Ansem the Wise told him. "You were a hero of the Keyblade before you lost your memory. It is your duty to help people."

Vanitas got a mini headache, this time showing how he had saved multiple people from the fledgling monsters with his Keyblade. Once the headache faded, he slashed through another heartless then turned towards Ansem.

"Be careful, Master!" Vanitas yelled out as he tucked the report into his lab coat then started running down the hallway.

Vanitas ran out the back entrance of the castle, and looked out at the town in horror. Heartless were appearing at random throughout the town, destroying things, and attacking people.

Knowing he had to help people, Vanitas ran through the castle's back exterior, through the city bailey. Running up the stairs of the bailey, Vanitas had to continue to take out heartless with his axe as he ran.

Vanitas then ran through the gates of the bailey, and witnessed what happens when a heartless attacks people. A soldier looking heartless had pressed its fist through a man's chest, and then pulled out a bright, heart shaped crystal. The man faded into light, and the heartless disappeared.

"Jesus," Vanitas whispered as he looked at where the man had stood.

That was nearly horrific for Vanitas to witness. Looking through what memories he had left, he could determine that this was something he had never witnessed before, so he was rightfully terrified.

Looking down, Vanitas noticed that the man had dropped some assault rifles when he had disappeared. Vanitas took off his lab coat and put the guns over both of his shoulders by the straps. Just as he was about to put the lab coat back on, Vanitas's attention was drawn to the sound of a child screaming. Without hesitation, Vanitas ran towards it, determined to help them.

A young boy was running away as a Heartless chased him around the central market. He had lost track of his friends, and didn't know where to go, so all he could do was run. Unfrotunately, he tripped on a loose brick in the ground, and fell forwards on his face. He turned so he was on his back, and screamed in horror as the Shadow heartless leaped at him.

Vanitas grunted as he chopped at the Shadow in midair, before it could land on the little boy. As the smoke dissippated, Vanitas turned towards the young, brunette boy, his head hurting slightly as his memories of him came back.

"Leon?" Vanitas asked, holding out his hand to help him up.

"V," Leon said as he took Vanitas's hand.

Vanitas helped Leon up, who looked at Vanitas with a blank expression on his face.

"You're a little late," Leon tried to joke.

"Yeah, "Vanitas agreed. "I wasn't trying to let that happen."

"Hey!" an older voice called out to them.

Both Leon and Vanitas looked up to see a blonde man dressed like a mechanic followed by two small girls, one brunette, one with dark hair, ran towards them with a big hand held cannon. After a small headache, Vanitas recognized them.

"Cid!" Vanitas called out. "Aerith. Yuffie."

"Vanitas!" Cid observed. "Took you long enough to come back."

"Yeah, it's a long story," Vanitas shrugged.

A loud crash had drawn their attentions up into the sky near the castle. A portal of darkness had opened, and from the portal flew out a woman in black, with horns pointing out of her head, carrying a grey staff with a green orb on top of it. With _another _headache, Vanitas recognized the woman.

"Who is that?!?" Cid yelled out, incredulously.

"Maleficent," Vanitas told Cid and the kids. "An evil witch out for ruling all the worlds."

Maleficent had started launching balls of darkness from her staff, and where they landed, groups of heartless appeared and started up an attack.

"Go forth, my minions!" she yelled out. "Spread out, and do not stop until everything is covered in the deepest darkness."

"She's got a high opinion of herself, eh?" Cid asked Vanitas.

"Very," Vanitas agreed. "But I can't stop her."

"Why not?" Aerith asked. "You seemed pretty powerful the last time we saw you."

"Yeah," Yuffie agreed. "Can't you just do Serenity again?"

"My Keyblade was destroyed," Vanitas told them. "Without it, I can't do any of those attacks that i did before.

During all of this, Maleficent had continued to look on to witness the damage that was happening to the world from up in the air, and had noticed the little group in the central market. Unfortunately, when Vanitas looked up to face her, she recognized him.

"_YOU!"_ she bellowed out. "Keybearer, take this!"

Maleficent then launched a particularly larger ball of darkness towards Vanitas.

"Run," Vanitas simply said.

The little group complied, and ran away immediately as the dark ball landed where Vanitas had stood. Multiple heartless exploded from the orb and ran after the group.

"We gotta get outta here!" Vanitas yelled to Cid as he held his axe with both hands.

"I've got a ship parked nearby," Cid yelled out. "We can leave and go somewhere safe in it."

Vanitas and the kids ran after Cid as he went up the stairs to where a Gummi Ship was parked. Cid had already left the entrance ramp open, so they ran in immediately. Cid ran into the pilots station, and Vanitas put his axe down on a nearby bench. He pulled one of the rifles off of his shoulder, and aimed it outside of the ramp. The ramp was Very slow with closing, and the Heartless were getting closer.

"Do you know how to use that thing?" Leon asked.

Vanitas then did the procedural checking of the ammo, pulling back the hammer, and making sure the safety was off.

"Apparently," Vanitas said as he raised the rifle line up to his eye, having no idea where he learned how to do that.

Vanitas squeezed the trigger, causing bullets to fly through the triangle shaped nozzle, and into the heartless as they got near the slowly rising ship ramp.

After a few seconds of shooting, the ramp had closed, and the ship started flying into the sky, away from the city.

Vanitas and the kids went up to the cockpit, and watched as they flew away from a place they called home. This was even worse for the kids because they were so young, and they didn't know anything besides what happened here. Vanitas felt sympathy for them as he watched them stare out the window.

Vanitas himself was upset, but probably not to the same degree as them. He wasn't really that accustomed to life at Radiant Garden as the others, after all.

But Vanitas was still upset about what had happened to the world. It was the only place he could have considered to be home while he didn't have his memories. Now that his memories were starting to come back one by one, he could sense that this wasn't the first time he had lost a place he considered home, and that just made him sadder.

Trying to distract himself, Vanitas turned to Cid in the pilot's chair.

"So where are we going?" he asked as they left the atmosphere of Radiant Garden.

"A haven for those whose worlds have been lost," Cid explained. "Traverse Town."

Vanitas nodded.

"You have any idea what could have caused that to happen?" Cid asked him, genuinely curious.

Vanitas perked up.

"Xehanort," Vanitas told them, anger now on his face. "He and I were amnesiacs that Ansem the Wise took as apprentices. He then talked the other apprentices to steal Ansem the Wise's experiments, and they did their own own experiments on the human heart, the hearts of worlds, darkness, and the heartless. My memories have been coming back in bursts of pain slightly."

Vanitas pressed his hand against his head to emphasize what he was talking about.

"Before we got amnesia," he continued. "Xehanort had told Maleficent about the darkness, and that with seven pure hearts of light, she could rule all worlds. It's because of him... that my friends are gone."

Vanitas looked down sadly as his voice cracked, remembering bits and pieces of his past.

He suddenly felt a tugging on his shirt, and looked down to see Leon looking up at him.

"It's okay," Leon told him. "We can maybe find a way to stop Xehanort."

Vanitas nodded.

"Yeah," he agreed. "You're right. Ansem the Wise gave me some of the reports containing research that Xehanort had done. With these reports, we can..."

Vanitas reached into the pocket of his lab coat... before he remembered he wasn't wearing his lab coat anymore. He had left it back in front of the entrance to the bailey.

"Oh, crap!" Vanitas exclaimed as he walked over to the window and looked back at the world they had left. Darkness had surrounded the world, making it clear that they wouldn't be going back there.

"Damn it," Vanitas exclaimed as they flew towards safety.

* * *

They had settled in Traverse Town pretty easily with the connections Cid had. Finding a house to sleep in, they managed to get rooms for everybody, and managed to get to sleep pretty easily, since it had been a long day.

All of them except for Vanitas and Cid, that is.

The first thing Vanitas did after they moved into the house was go into town and buy various weapons from shops. On top of the two rifles and the axe, he now had a shotgun, some handguns, a machete, a katana, a sledgehammer, some knives, a baseball bat, a spear, and a staff. Using a spell book he had also purchased, he managed to fit them all into a sling that he was able to fit across his back. All he had to do was reach into the sling, and he would could have any of the weapons at his disposal. He was gonna need them.

Vanitas had set up a thumbtack board on the wall, and was writing down little notes to attach onto it.

"You sure this is something you can do?" Cid asked him.

"It's the only thing I can do," Vanitas said as he attached another note to the board. "I don't have a life force, my friends are gone, and my Keyblade was destroyed. It's either do this, or kill myself."

Cid nodded in understanding.

"So what are you gonna do?" he asked.

Vanitas looked at him while he cleaned one of his handguns.

"I'm gonna find Xehanort," he explained. "Beat him to a pulp, force him to help me get back my Keyblade and my friends, lock away the darkness forever..."

Vanitas looked up at the board in determination.

"Then I'm gonna put a bullet in his fucking head," he said as he slid back the chamber of his pistol.

It was time to go to work.

**Author's Note:**

> During the nine year difference of this and the start of Kingdom Hearts, his outfit and his voice change. He's pretty much on a homicidal rampage, and the only thing that'll be able to calm him down will be Sora. He's gonna have his work cut out for him, though. That's for sure. No exact date for when the first chapter for Kingdom Hearts I will be up, but it will be coming soon.


End file.
